


Paris, New York

by memymo



Category: Suits (TV), White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 10:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1263214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memymo/pseuds/memymo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't Casablanca.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paris, New York

In another life time, Neal Caffrey was not the conman-turned-FBI-consultant. There was never any tracker, or Peter, Mozzie, Kate, or June. New York was never there and Neal never fell in love with it.

In another life time, Neal Caffrey was just an ordinary, sorrowful man, alone in the city of love.

In another life time, he might have known Harvey Specter, not yet the best closer of the city, not yet the smug, slick lawyer, but another ordinary, sorrowful man in the city of love. In another life time, they might have love, have wept, and laughed together.

That was another lifetime all together. A lifetime of whirlwind romance and candle lit dinners in fancy restaurants with courses that always took Neal a while to remember and pronounce fluently. There were midnight strolls on the banks of the Seine. There was wind underneath them as they drank in the entire view of Paris from the top of Eiffel. There was understanding and memories that were buried deep in the night as two bodies came together, the sweat and the heat washed away the pain of another lifetime. No tearful goodbye, no promise – they both know this was not a fairytale and the princess never got the prince, because that was just how life worked. Just a what-if, a road never take in the highway and memories that were made to be locked away.

From Paris, Neal set out to get the world and Harvey to conquer New York. Another sky, another life. Their paths untangle themselves and headed toward different directions.

Collision was always the worst.

In this lifetime, the lifetime where Harvey was the top dog and got himself an assistant who was brilliant but also not in possession of the Harvard law degree he claimed, Neal was the famed conman who was now working for the agency that arrested him.

In this lifetime, New York became the constant in their life.

In this lifetime, they met again.

It was not deliberated. On a conscious level. Harvey could not argue for the subconscious, and he would rather not to. Besides, he had a legitimate excuse, which was Mike. Mike, innocent, trusting Mike who really needed to lie better and to have someone cover him because if no one found out about that little secret then he would blow them up one day. And who was better to turn to in this less than legal business than the best forger and conman Harvey happened to know?

(He steadily ignored the treacherous voice inside his head that he was just going out of his way to see Neal again. There was nothing between them in this lifetime where the lights in New York stayed all night and Seine flowing in the middle of the city, only cheesecake and the bitter taste of coffee hastily poured and grabbed by busy hands at the corner of the street)

So he met Neal, again, because Harvey Specter was many things if not resourceful.

Neither knew what to expect, the memories of another lifetime locked tightly away in their chests. Too many things to say, too little time, too little words. Suddenly the world shifted and the light dimmed, the horizon expanded and the skyscrapers faded away into the darkness, as cobble stone roads emerged and the smell of freshly baked pastry enticed the strangers in the night.

Sky blue. That was the first thing that hit Harvey. Bright sky blue, unchanging, untainted. But Harvey knew better know, because he wasn’t a wide-eye low level intern any more, struggling to climb up the ladder, just like Neal was no longer the naïve little lost boy in the city of so many lost boys.

They did not touch nor look into each other eyes, too afraid to break the fragile wall they had built around them, afraid that the life they had locked away would crawled its way out of them. There was no room for mistakes or lapse of judgement now. This was New York, brightly lit New York with its skyscrapers and hard, cold concrete, the city of neon and chrome, not the city of gentle curves and breathless moans under the silver moon, the rushing of the river lulled the lovers into the landscapes of dreams.

In this lifetime, Harvey was purely a customer in need of some less than legal service, and Neal was someone who provided such service.

In this lifetime, they were only two strangers united under circumstances that cannot be avoided.

In this lifetime, there was only New York, and no Paris.

This wasn’t Casablanca.

So they parted, once again, no goodbyes and no promises, because they belong to another lifetime where they have been left unsaid, unspoken, just like the love that had been locked away under layers of dust. Maybe, in another lifetime, Harvey mused wistfully.

A lifetime that would never come.


End file.
